2005-12-31

Whither scandal?

And so we reach the end of another year, chickens -- a year which, if we are to believe all of the $1.99 STAR magazine ripoffs, spelled untold doom for many, many celebrity "relationships."

Paris was engaged to Paris until Paris's parents told Paris not to marry Paris, so Paris broke up with Paris. Jennifer and Brad got divorced, Nick and Jessica are ABOUT to get divorced, and Britney and Cletus Federline are not far behind, from what my very reliable $1.99 sources tell me.

I could sit here on my decidedly NON-celebrity highhorse, bewailing the lack of "morals" in Hollywood and darkly declaring that certain famous people who get involved with other famous people "deserve one another," and believe me when I say that I DO this on an astonishingly regular basis. But not today. All told, today's celebrities are a terribly boring lot, Britney-Spears-Cheeto-Propane-Tank-Nursing-Bra-Under-A-Camisole-Federline being a possible exception (I say this only because I really can't wait to hear the album that will most assuredly spring forth from her failed marriage. I'm thinking it's going to have a one-word title like "Evolution" or "Chrysalis" and there will be one track in which Britney will attempt to rhyme something with "sippy cups," because - you know - she's a single mom now, y'all).

Even the Brad/Angelina "scandal" is barely that. I am tired of Angelina. She's like the crazy girl in your dorm who reveals her dark, secret, self-cutting soul to you, and then turns around and makes out with your boyfriend at the spring musical's cast party.

What I long for, and know in my heart of hearts will never happen, is a filthy scandal along the lines of the George S. Kaufman/Mary Astor affair.

Pretty little Mary Astor - known to 1930's filmgoers as a lovely ingenue-type in vehicles such as "The Little Giant" and "Page Miss Glory" - was married to a prominent doctor and had a young daughter. All was sweetly domestic and right with the world until the doctor stumbled upon Mary's FILTHY, FILTHY diary - carelessly tossed into her undie drawer - in which she nearly-rapturously described, in quite lurid, FILTHY detail, her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman:

"It's been ages since I felt a man up in public!"
"...we went back to the flat where George proceeded to fuck the living daylights out of me."
"Ah, desert night - with George's body plunging into mine - naked under the stars..."
"His powers of recuperation are amazing....we shared our fourth climax at dawn....George is just hard all the time....was any woman happier?"

It must needs be said that Mary's perpetually-rock-hard soldier of love was THIS guy:

Awesome. Just absolutely, comprehensively AWESOME.

They don't make scandals like that anymore, chickens. I don't see how it can happen in this day and age. There's no studio system working overtime to protect the images of stars. You can find pictures of topless, shithoused starlets as easily as ordering a pizza. I can't imagine someone like - say - Michelle Trachtenberg waxing rhapsodic about the salami-delivering prowess of David McCullough, and even then, there's the fact that in all probability, she wouldn't keep a diary. It'd be all captured in furtive bursts of text-messaging:

OMG,,,was w/ D last nite,,,im so SORE! LOL!!! hehehehe...

Just not the same.

Still, I'm holding out hope for Brit.

lisamcc at 10:47 a.m.

4 comments so far
Todd
2006-01-06 12:41:48
The Astor : Kaufman thing resembles the Roberts : Lovett thing. Except less milquetoast.
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Lexi
2006-01-05 14:02:32
I haven't written in mine, nor read anyone else's diary in months. I thought I'd catch up and now my nose hurts and my shirt is wet. That is what happens when I try to read Lisa McC whilst sipping a Diet Coke. Snarfed-thru-nose Diet Coke is painful, very very painful.
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Jess
2005-12-31 14:36:34
Is it wrong that I think that guy is hella hot? In a Jeff Goldblum kinda way.
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Lisa
2005-12-31 14:39:23
Nope -- he had that "intellectual" thing going for him. I would've been all over it like white on rice! Mary Astor was no fool.
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